New graduate software engineers and new customer service representatives are both quite vulnerable to normal cyclical activity, though. Those trends could both be explained by a general belief among hiring managers that they have over-hired and/or that there is a recessio coming, both of which are quite likely.

I also happen to work in software and I don't see any sign of AI replacement. I do see reduced hiring because the US government is poking at things all over the economy without any clear idea of what they're doing. If there was AI replacement happening, we'd be reducing outreach to new graduates and aggressively pushing mid-level employees to use AI tools. But we're not doing that. Most software companies actually seem very cautious about AI tools because of the risk of IP contamination.

Also, I happen think software engineers are not very replaceable. AI can fill-in-the-blanks in code, but someone still has to set out the requirements and make sure they're filled. In spite of various industry fictions, that is still largely done by the people who write the code.

Where I would be looking for AI replacement is first year lawyers and accountants. Historically what they do is read documents trying to find information their seniors have asked for, because the seniors are trying to build some argument that the partners are trying to make. This is exactly the kind of work LLMs are very good at. The only potential problem is professional liability, but its the partners who take that risk, and the partners are also the ones who stand to profit if they can economize.

The interesting question then is, this messes with the structure of professional services firms, which are generally up-or-out pyramid structures. Some percentage of first years are cut and sent out with good references to become future customers and the rest then graduate to incrementally more responsible work. If you hire few (or no) first years because their job is now to type questions into a chatbot, who does that incrmenetally more responsible work next year? And who goes out into the world and refers your future customers?